"Cosmic bomb" was another name for the
atomic bomb
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
. It was used for a short period of time in 1945 and 1946. The first ''New York Times'' story about the bombing of
Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui h ...
referred to "this terrible new weapon, which the War Department also calls the 'Cosmic Bomb.'" Another article noted that "what the Army has called the 'cosmic bomb' was not regarded by those responsible for winning the war against Japan as the factor which, of itself, would give the war its finishing touch", and a headline reported "Secret War Nipped Reich Cosmic Bomb."
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, scie ...
uses the phrase several times in his 1973 novel ''
Gravity's Rainbow
''Gravity's Rainbow'' is a 1973 novel by American writer Thomas Pynchon. The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military. In particular, ...
'', which is set roughly in the period during which the term was current.
The term rapidly fell into disuse as applied to weaponry, soon yielding to "atomic bomb" (which, in turn, was eventually to yield to "nuclear weapon"). In equestrian circles, it survived for many years in the racing career of a thoroughbred named "Cosmic Bomb" and in the pedigrees of horses he sired.
More recently, the term has been applied to powerful energy surges from celestial objects known as
magnetars
A magnetar is a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field (∼109 to 1011 T, ∼1013 to 1015 G). The magnetic-field decay powers the emission of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays.War ...
.
[{{cite web, url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989278,00.html, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080306163010/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989278,00.html, url-status=dead, archive-date=March 6, 2008, title=Cosmic Bomb, author=Michael D. Lemonick, date=Oct 12, 1998, access-date=2008-07-24, publisher=Time]
References
Nuclear weapons